So, it is important to create a professional and impressive resume is to make sure that it’s organized.

Most resumes follow the reverse chronological formatand start by listing out your most recent experience first.

Irrespective of the format, your resume must contain the following things

Contact Information

Job Summary/Objective

Work Experience

Education

Skills

Achievements

Contact Information

This is the most obvious and easy part of writing a resume. But, have you

Included your latest address, e-mail and phone number? Giving your employer the wrong details, even if it was unintentional, is the last thing you want to do.

Made sure that your e-mail address looks professional enough? or does it resemble sweetpeach333@gmail.com? If you answered yes to this question you must create a professional e-mail id for yourself. For example, alia@gmail.com

Included links to online portfolios in your resume? This is especially useful for coders, writers and graphic designers. Online Portfolios can be blogs, social accounts, etc. that are relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Job Summary/Objective

A resume objectiveis an introductory statement written on the top of the resume. Its sole purpose is to give prospective employers an idea of your aims, passion and experience. You can customize it for different companies in order to showcase your desire to work for them.

Job summaries are brief descriptions that are also written at the top of your resume. Unlike objectives, summaries give prospective employers an idea of what you’ve achieved in your previous organization.

Should you include a job summary or an objective to impress employers?

This question has puzzled almost everybody who wants to learn how to prepare a resume.

Here’s the answer

Writing an objective for a resumeis becoming outdated. Employers prefer summaries because it gives them an idea of what you can contribute to their organization.

However, you should use a job objective for your resume if you’re a fresher or switching to a new career.

Here are a few points to remember while writing a job summary/objective for a resume

Include only relevant statements. Don’t include repeated information. Include keywords from your job description here, if you can.

Use numbers if applicable. This is used to grab the attention of the prospective employer. If you’ve worked for 5 years, include it. If your campaigns have boosted sales by 76%, include it. Again, don’t forget to keep it relevant.

Work Experience

Here are a few things to remember when you’re listing out work experiences for a professional resume.

List relevant work experience in reverse chronological format.

Avoid leaving gaps in employment. In a bid to make things relevant, don’t leave gaps in employment. If you’ve worked in a job that doesn’t seem relevant to the job you’re applying to, include it anyway.

Include keywords that your recruiter would like to see.

Education

If you’re an experienced professional, keep this section as brief as possible and highlight relevant work experience instead.

But, if you’re just out of college, list out relevant courses that you’ve taken, under a separate sub-section.

Skills

Include relevant hard and soft-skills. Avoid including skills that are not a part of the job description.

Don’t lie about your skills. List only those skills that you have. Giving your employer a bad impression is something you don’t want to do.

Achievements

When you’re writing about your achievements, include statistics wherever you can.

For ex.

Selected as the “Best Employee of the Year 2018” from a pool of 100employees sounds more lucrative than

“Awarded Best Employee of the Year 2018”.

As mentioned before, you can include relevant courses, conferences, etc. in a separate section.

Here are other tips to create a professional resume.

DON’T use the same resume for multiple jobs. Yes, it’s tempting but you should avoid doing this unless the jobs you’re applying for have nearly identical job descriptions.

Make your resume concise and impactful. Condense everything into a page. Be selective in what you include on your resume.

List out what you’ve achieved. Nothing persuades an employer more than your accomplishments. Focus less on the responsibilities section.

Proofread and edit your resume. A good resume is devoid of typos and has a good word-structure.

Give your resume a professional name. ex. Resume_Sarah_XYZ_Corp.

Grammatical Mistakes Checklist

This will make sure your resume is error-free and consistent.

Use the correct tense. Present tense should be used to describe a present role while your previous roles should be described using past tense.

Use Action Verbs. Your Professional resume should include a list of action words like coordinated, programmed, formulated, launched, reduced etc. to convey action.